


I Want to Believe

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 04:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18513895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: mini fic idea / or just a question / if mulder and scully hadn't been recruited to the FBI, what do you think their careers would've looked like? how would they have met?





	I Want to Believe

He admires the shiny nameplate on the door. Professor F W Mulder, Child Psychologist. It’s taken years, but he can’t help feel a rush of pride. Even his father had shaken his hand when he announced he was opening up his own private practice. His mother pressed a hankie to her lips and wept.

“We should have done more for you, son. After your sister…”

He did more for himself. He tried all the good therapies: drink, drugs, rock and roll. Women helped for a while. The occasional man satisfied his curiosity. But his vanished sister remained a dull pain in his head and sex, however it was presented, was not the cure.

His breakthrough came when he was recommended as a consultant to the FBI on a child abduction case. His work with the boy, returned suffering horrific nightmares, got him the right sort of attention. The ache inside gradually began to dissipate.

A new patient form landed on his desk. He read the notes and felt a familiar but unsettling buzz. A six year old boy, taken from his home. Older child present, but rendered useless by fear and some kind of paralysing force. The word alien had been carefully left out of the narrative. He reread it, absorbing the details, comparing his own lived experience and plundering his wealth of clinical experience. He had to tread carefully so as not to make assumptions. The patient was still young, traumatised.

Emily Scully was a quiet, moon-eyed child with a blunt fringed haircut, a bob, he thought they were called, a shade of eye-catching red. She was nine. Her mother was stunning. Slim, confident, same red hair cut in the more adult version of the style.

“Emily, you were in the room when Matthew disappeared?” He tapped the report in the file, directed his gaze at the child, then to her mother. “Could you tell me about what happened that day?”

“It’s all in the file,” the woman said. She didn’t cover up her impatience very well.

“I like to hear the child’s spoken version, Miss…”

“Doctor…Doctor Dana Scully. I’m a paediatrician. Our Lady of Sorrows.”

“Then you’ll know how important it is that children are allowed to speak for themselves.”

She granted him a brief nod and whispered to Emily. “Go ahead, sweetie. Tell the doctor what happened that night.”

The girl spoke softly but with great detail, outlining how she tried to save her cousin from the light but it was like a forcefield.

“She wakes at night screaming about the men coming to take her next.” Dana spoke as if she were holding back not just tears, but rage.

“And your nephew’s parents, your brother and his wife, they don’t believe Emily’s account of the event?” He smiled at Emily who was swinging her legs back and forth under the chair.

“Bill doesn’t even believe Emily is my…” she looked at the child, then at Mulder, clearly stricken at her outburst. “Bill and Tara are upset. They just want answers about what happened to their son.”

“They’re doing tests,” Emily said quietly. “He’s crying.”

Mulder walked around his desk and sat next to Emily.

Dana shook her head. “She keeps saying that like she can see him, or something.”

“I can hear him. But nobody believes me.” Tears popped into the child’s eyes. Her fists clenched.

“How do you hear him, Emily?” Mulder asked, his blood warming his chest. “How does it happen?”

“He’s in my head but nobody believes me,” Emily reached for her mother’s hand and Dana squeezed it, smiled her encouragement.

Mulder leant his elbows on his knees and said, “I want to believe.”


End file.
